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Flonora Merritt is an advisor for Friendship News Network (FNN), the high school journalism program at Friendship Collegiate Academy in Washington, DC. Graduating from Friendship Collegiate High School in 2008 as a salutatorian, she returned to her alma mater to run FNN at Collegiate and take it to new places. In high school, she served as editor-in-chief of Rated-T magazine and played a key role in its transition to digital media.
Merritt is a self-taught photographer and video editor. When her students wanted to learn photography and broadcasting, she trained herself so they could have the full experience. She’s been teaching journalism, photography, and video production since 2015. Since then, her students’ work has been featured in Collegiate’s high school yearbooks, the FNN website codefnn, and in other publications like Afro.
Venturing into video production has led to a growing YouTube Channel with nearly 500 subscribers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to a $30,000 grant from the DC Arts and Humanities Council, she produced a documentary on gentrification in DC with her students, titled Fading Color. The film premiered in October 2022 at the Reach Theater in the Kennedy Center. Fading Color can be seen on codefnn.
In 2022, Merritt started her digital publication, Noir Neon Vibes, a platform to amplify black and queer voices with two podcasts, Neon Mic and Virtual Road Rage; a newsletter called NNV Catch Up; and a photo blog all on her website, noirneonvibes.
